September 19, 2008
By Adam Rochwerg
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| Adam Rochwerg with Indian children in Varnasi on the first day of the festival of Holi. He notes his T-shirt was white earlier in the day. (Photo courtesy of Adam Rochwerg) |
There I was, a 20-year-old Canadian, at the end of a very long day of travel, exhausted, dirty, hungry, and walking into a world totally different from my own.
“WELCOME TO BOMBAY” read the large sign in front of me. What did I get myself into? Why could I not just stay in Halifax, go to class, and go out with my friends? Why did I have to take the semester off to go to India and Nepal? “Sir, sir, welcome to India, may I get your good name sir?” Immediately I snapped out of my haze, told myself to smarten up, and that I was about to set out on the adventure of a lifetime.
This past January, I had the opportunity to travel to India, where I met up with my brother and our very good friend, and we journeyed across the country, eventually making it into Nepal. My grandfather always told us that travel was the best form of education, and that no matter what you learned in a classroom, travel was without a doubt, a necessary part of a student’s education. Well, after taking his advice to heart, and seeing such an interesting part of the world first hand, I completely agree.
Our adventure began in Kochi, India and moved northward through the west coast of the country, taking us into the states of Kerala, Karnataka, Goa, Maharashtra, Rajasthan, and Punjab. At this point, in northern India, on the Pakistan border (where there is quite a scene, by the way), we turned east, into Himachal Pradesh, Delhi, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, and West Bengal. Finally, after three quite fascinating months, we entered into Nepal for two weeks of hiking around the largest mountains in the world.
Educational and exhausting
Being a history major, I had learned about such places, and the history of the people and land, however, being there, I realized that I really couldn’t appreciate such a colourful and interesting place without seeing it firsthand. Whether it was the extremely vivid Kama Sutra temples of Khajuraho, the great and everlasting beauty of the Taj Mahal, or the unexplainable fun felt during the spring festival of Holi, when citizens literally close down their cities to throw paint on each other all day while dancing in the streets, this trip truly was an adventure full of education.
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| A Hindu holy man, a Sadhu, sits on the banks of the Ganges in Varnasi. (Adam Rochwerg Photo) |
It was an extremely trying trip, too. We’d find ourselves attempting to fight a large crowd of locals for a spot on a bus that was so full it didn’t even have room on the roof and manoeuvring around throngs of locals simply staring at you because you are foreign. But although it became trying at times—I would change nothing. I most definitely understand now what my grandfather meant; travel really is the best education. For example, sitting in Varnasi, the Hindu holy city, talking with a religious man, a Sadhu, draped in his saffron robes, I began to attempt the feat of understanding the ancient and interesting Hindu religion, a religion with over 30 million deities! I had done some research before I left, to try and understand this foreign place a little more, but nothing I had read compared to this conversation with a Sadhu. After a short time talking, I was more educated on the Hindu religion and the work of a Sadhu than I was in an entire semester of readings.
Along the same lines, both of these countries are full of interesting religions, such as Hinduism, Jainism, Islam, and even Christianity. However, I completely fell in love with Tibetan Buddhism. In northern India, we found ourselves in the town of Macleod Ganj, the home of exiled Tibetans, and the Dalai Lama. An afternoon of learning about Buddhist traditions and Tibetan history from the Dalai Lama himself definitely was an experience of education on the subject that I could receive nowhere else. It was interesting to see such a religious and prominent world figure joke and laugh with all of those sitting and learning from him—a humbling experience.
Conversations
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| Adam (centre) with his brother (right) and friend in front of the Taj Mahal. "Many Indian men grow moustaches, and so, to fit in, we grew them as well." |
Train travel was a vital part of my education during the semester. Sitting on a train for 20 hours, packed into a car that clearly had too many people in it, I received some of my best education, and had some of my best conversations. Local Indians, simply interested in where I came from, or what I was doing in India, would strike up a conversation to learn about me. Perfect, because I then got the chance to learn about them. A conversation would always begin with, “Hello sir, may I get your good name please sir? Would you please be able to tell me about Canada? How do you enjoy India?” Such a polite people, they were so genuinely interested in a complete stranger. Our conversations would inevitably turn to me asking every question that came to mind about India, or Nepal, or the culture, or religion of the area, which in 20 hours, can be an education surpassed by none; no reading, no essays, no exams, just talking out of sheer interest.
Coming back to Canada, I have tried to discuss my trip with my friends and family. However each time, I run into the same problem—I just can’t seem to describe what I saw with words; it must be experienced firsthand. How could I dare to describe the feeling of utter amazement I felt when, by accident, I walked to the top of my hostel in Agra and saw the Taj Mahal under the evening sky for the first time? How could I attempt to explain the shock I experienced when I realized that the stick an Untouchable child was putting onto a fire in Varnasi was actually a human leg going onto the funeral pyre of the body it belonged to? Where would I even begin when telling of the day we spent walking around a festival in a small town in Kerala, where the three Canadians, not the dancing elephants behind us, were the main attraction?
I have come to the conclusion that such explanations are impossible. No justice would be done to my trip, or to the places, things, and people, that I saw and met on my journey. The trip of a lifetime and the education of a lifetime were handed to me with my plane ticket to Bombay.
Adam Rochwerg is a fourth-year history student who is back at Dalhousie writing essays and worrying about exams. He plans to spend his next educational excursion on a houseboat travelling the Mississippi River.
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